Dinner Night for Two
by MadCow77
Summary: When two unlikely characters wake up in a locked room with no memory of how they got there, they must pool together their resources in order to make their escape and find out the truth behind their unexpected circumstances. One shot. This story was written for the Writer's Anonymous "Locked in a Room" Challenge.
**Author's Notes** : This story was written for the _Writer's Anonymous "Locked in a Room" Challenge_. Additionally, due to certain events occurring in the middle of the fourth season of Arrow, let's just assume that this story would have taken place somewhere very early in that season.

 **Update** : This story has been revised with corrected typos and grammar (thanks Rhea for reviewing and judging), and with a new flashback added in the middle of the story.

* * *

"So what you're saying is, it's not aliens." Felicity Smoak adjusted her plastic black and brown glasses that had slowly slipped off the comfortable bridge of her nose as she watched the somewhat anachronistically-dressed woman casually examine the surroundings from across the room with a somewhat smug, I-know-what-I'm-doing kind of look on her. "But it's aliens?"

"Quite right," the woman replied as she ran her hands across a finely woven set of white curtains by a tall double hung-window that revealed nothing but absolute, pitch black darkness on the other side. "Judging by the architecture, the environment, and the feel, it all seems quite human. Too human, perhaps. Clara, by the way."

"Who?" Felicity snapped to attention. "Oh, you mean you. Me, I'm Felicity. Felicity Smoak, yes, that's my full name. That, it is."

Clara looked back at her, amused. "You're quite the interesting one. I bet the Doctor would love to have someone like you around."

"Doctor who?" Felicity asked, then quickly fell back to her stammering demeanour. "I mean, I've already got someone. I mean, someone as in, you know, on a support kind of relationship. Not, you know, that other relationship thing. I mean, me and Ollie may or may not have a thing or two, but I mean, who is this Doctor again?"

Clara, who was dressed in a fully formal Victorian era ball dress, chuckled as she effortlessly made her way towards the door despite the cumbersome look of her attire. "You could call us partners? Yes, I like the sound of that. Partners." She tugged at the handle and let out a soft sigh. "Locked, as expected. Might even be deadlock sealed as well. I don't suppose you have a sonic screwdriver on you to test out a theory?"

"Deadlock? Sonic?" Things were definitely getting stranger and stranger for Felicity. One moment she was with Oliver Queen, staking out a potential HIVE safe house that they unexpectedly ran into in the middle of a pleasant dinner, and in the next a blue police telephone booth appeared out of nowhere. She couldn't help but feel uncomfortable at the fact that the rest of her memory had been a little on the fuzzy side of things until she woke up in this well-furnished room alongside Clara. "Sorry, but no, don't have any sonics with me." She even rummaged through her little designer purse for show. "Yep, no sonics here."

"A pity. A sonic screwdriver might have been useful in times like this." Clara continued to scrutinize the room that they were trapped in, wandering around in a seemingly purposeful manner and carefully observing every nook and cranny. It certainly was comfy as far as prisons were concerned; the walls were pure white – almost unnaturally clean even – and populated by a most anachronistic collection of furniture one could imagine including what may be an Ikea sofa bed propped up against the wall while what should have been a Victorian-era fireplace stood at the opposite end. Then in the midst of this a bladeless Dyson stand fan kept the two of them cool. It was like they were inside a recently used commercial studio set of some kind.

"I'm sorry, but do you even know how we got here?"

"Of course I do." Clara gave Felicity that are-you-even-asking-me-this look, and then strode over to the middle of the room. "Okay, let's establish the facts. We're locked in a room with four windows that may not even be windows, a door that's probably deadlock sealed, and a room that may not even be an actual room. What's missing from this picture?"

"Excuse me," Felicity interrupted. "But what do you mean by, 'not even be an actual room'?"

"Alternate dimension in space, perhaps. It's a wibbley wobbly timey wimey thing."

"Right. It's a thing," Felicity replied sarcastically.

"Anyway." Clara clasped her hands together. "If this room is what I think it is, we might be able to find some kind of hidden panel somewhere along the walls which may help get the door open."

Felicity shrugged. "What's stopping us from just smashing the windows open with…" She quickly scanned the room and spotted the round, wooden dining table sitting exactly in the middle of the room. "Table. Big, heavy, dining table thing."

"That's usually a good plan but if this is more of an enclosed space within a pocket dimension then I highly suspect that they aren't real windows."

"Pocket dimensions," Felicity muttered. "First meta humans, then magic, and now pocket dimensions. Welcome to the new normal."

"Don't be silly," Clara clucked her tongue. "There's no such thing as magic."

"Says the 17th-century girl who just spouted off technobabble that shouldn't even have existed in her time." Felicity gingerly put her weight onto the table to test its strength and rigidity and, once fully satisfied that it was indeed a solid chunk of wood, tried to lift it up. That obviously didn't work. "Umm, a little help?"

"Oh this was just for dinner," Clara replied, lifting her dress up slightly to indicate the subject matter. "Something came up."

"Why do things always come up in the middle of dinner?" Felicity was sorely tempted to roll her eyes.

"What is it with men and their ability to screw up a perfectly good dinner for a chance at yet another exciting adventure of being abducted and locked up in a strange room? Not that I'm complaining, mind you." For a moment Clara paused, then her expression turned into a puzzled one. "Actually, that's strange. Now that you mention dinner, I can't for the life of me remember what I was having."

"Short term memory loss. It's weird, but apparently I am also experiencing the same thing." Felicity shrugged it off and then tried to nudge the table a second time around. There'll be time to think about such things after more immediate, pressing matters had been attended to. The table refused to budge a single inch, though.

Clara tightened her grip at the opposite end of the table. "On three. One, two, three!"

Both girls grunted, heaved and shoved, but the table would never relent. Not to these two. Never. It was as if that was its sole purpose in life – to not ever relent to the efforts of Felicity and Clara. "This is impossible!" Felicity threw her hands up in failure.

"No, this is strange," Clara said.

"What do you mean? That two adult girls failed to lift a simple wooden table?"

"Yes. Think about it."

Felicity's eyes widened. She promptly went down on all fours and examined the table's feet. "It doesn't look bolted down." She then tried pushing the table sideways. "Not budging either."

"Then there is only one other explanation for this. This isn't a table at all."

"Right. It's a mouse deer disguised as a table."

Clara only smirked at the sarcasm. "Chameleon circuit, silly."

"Somehow I understood that," Felicity said. "By that I don't mean I understood it, but chameleons. Reptiles that do chameleon-y things. Like this table, or so it seems. Not-table, I mean. But that aside, how's that supposed to work?"

Clara began to run her hands across the table's surface, stopping close to the centre of it. She then ran her hand upwards, pushing against what seemed like an invisible column. "How quaint."

That prompted Felicity to reach out for the invisible column as well. It was too big for her palm to wrap around fully, but it was most certainly solid. "Well, that's new. Invisible not-table thing." She turned to Clara afterwards. "What do you think this is?"

A wide smile formed on Clara's face. "If I were to make a very wild and baseless assumption, a console of a TARDIS, perhaps." Her face darkened a little immediately after. "Not the Doctor's, I presume."

"I'm just going to pretend that I fully understood what you just said and move on to, how do we unmask this tardy thing?" She shrugged, then added, "Or uncloak, or un-chameleonise, or whatever."

Clara was already way ahead of Felicity on this one. She held up a chair and began hammering down on the table as she pronounced each syllable: "It's TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space." Upon hitting the thing for the n-th time, a faint shimmer and low hum from the table made her pause.

"That sounds like you should keep hitting it harder," Felicity said.

And so Clara did. Each time she struck the thing, it shimmered and hummed. After several more violent attempts at uncloaking the chameleon circuit, it seemed to finally give way, revealing what was definitely an advanced circular console of some sort with a semi-transparent tube in the centre. A small, antique-like brass key appeared to be suspended inside the tube.

"A key?" Felicity leaned forward to take a closer look. It was most definitely a key. One that would be inserted into a keyhole to open a hypothetical door. "This doesn't make sense at all. Assuming this is the key that opens the door, why hide it inside the room itself?"

"That's only your presumption. What if the key was for something else instead?"

Felicity shrugged. "You're probably right. Who in their right mind would hide the keys to the prison inside the prison cell itself?" She returned her gaze to the mysterious floating key in the tubing. "So what do you think it is?"

"A TARDIS key, is my guess." Clara rested the palm of her hand on the surface of the tube next to the key, as if expecting some kind of reaction to occur. Nothing happened, of course. "I wonder…"

"It's a computer, isn't it?" Felicity began scrutinizing the rest of the console from top to bottom, taking note of all the little dials and widgets, sockets and sprockets, littered throughout the surface. Some of the apparatus had already popped out of their respective sockets though, no doubt due to Clara's most violent method of revealing its true form. "Kind of a mess though."

"What do you think you're even trying to do?"

The tone was more curious than judgmental, coming from Clara, but Felicity mostly ignored her. She was already in full on inquisitive mode. She pulled up a small but most definitely recognizable display unit from one section of the machine and another most certainly recognizable console from another. A few random keystrokes on the console made the display come to life, populating the screen's tiny real estate with a collection on unintelligible glyphs and symbols. Not that it mattered to Felicity, who kept on tapping at the console as if she knew what she was doing.

"Do you know what you're doing?"

"Of course. I'm trying to gain access to the system and see exactly what we're up against." Felicity paused, leaned forward and adjusted her glasses. "Now hold on a moment… what do we have here?"

"You actually understand all this?" Clara asked, observing the random collection of characters and symbols now systematically adorning the monochrome green display.

"Of course. Well, not exactly, it being some kind of alien language-based operating system and all, but I'm the greatest computer hacker in Star City and Central City. Some even say Gotham too. Alien computer system with ironclad-like encryption system and most certainly eccentric and proprietary hardware firewall? No problem at all."

Clara rolled her eyes. "Let me get this straight: you can hack into an alien computer system?"

"Yup," Felicity said without any hesitation or doubt in her voice. "It's my super power."

It certainly took a while for Felicity to carefully and systematically probe the system's inner workings. She experimented with different key combinations, slowly but surely figuring out their meaning and purpose in relation to each other.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

"Of course. Piece of cake." Felicity gestured to the ever-scrolling fleet of symbols flying across the screen. "See, blonds here, brunettes there, a redhead over here."

"Right. I'm not even sure if what you said is even possible at all, but who am I to judge? In the meantime, I'll get back to investigating the room for more clues." Clara pulled a nearby lamp shade towards her and hoisted it up with both hands to examine the seemingly ordinary household object more closely.

"Hang on. Wait. I think I've got something."

With a victorious final tap on the equivalent of the 'Enter' key, the vertical column that held the key in place slowly rose with an audible whirr. Both girls watched with fascination, until there was nothing left in between them and the key that was still mysteriously floating in place before them. Clara raised her hand to take it.

"Wait…" Felicity grabbed a hold of Clara's hand.

"It's a trap?"

"It most certainly is."

"Should we get an axe?"

"Nope. I've got an even better idea…" Felicity began tapping on the console again. She was so sure that she had spotted several abnormalities in the software, even though half an hour ago she barely understood the system's algorithms and inner workings. Actually, she still didn't understand most of it all, but binary digital systems shared a common base; all that was needed was to understand the foundation and then be able to hack the code at the lowest level, or else she would not have earned the greatest hacker moniker for herself.

Clara only watched in silence. Probably in admiration too, but it wasn't something that Felicity would notice while she was engrossed in her work.

"Done. You can take the key now," Felicity said with a big and smug smile plastered all over her face.

"Are you sure?" Clara asked sceptically.

"You don't trust me? Here, I'll take it for you." Felicity got up and began reaching for the key but Clara raced her to it and snatched the key first. That's when they were both overwhelmed by a bright white light that temporarily knocked out everyone in the room.

* * *

Three hours earlier, Felicity was having the time of her life with Oliver Queen. Indian food was on the menu and he knew the best place in Star City. They had just begun dining when things predictably went wrong.

"Five o' clock," Oliver said without even looking up from his meal. He seemed engrossed in perfectly herding and shaping the lump of rice in his plate to fit neatly into his hands; only his words betrayed his real focus. "No, don't look."

Indeed, Felicity was tempted to turn around if not for Ollie's warning. Still, curiosity was tugging at her like an itch on the back. "What's at five o' clock?"

"Four men, probably armed; ex-military perhaps, with hidden comms in their ears. Escorting another in a suit with a briefcase chained to his wrist." He continued rounding up the rice into his cupped hand and casually funnelled the food into his mouth with his thumb. "They look edgy. Something's coming down soon."

"Who do you think they are? HIVE?"

"Not sure." His eyes fell upon Felicity. "You haven't touched your food yet."

Felicity blinked. "Well, of course I haven't, what with a sudden and unexpected Leverage crew deciding to do a gig right behind me. How did you even know they were ex-military?"

"Well, they have—"

"And don't say they have some kind of distinctive mannerism," Felicity interrupted. "You're no Elliot Spencer," she said with a smug grin.

"Elliot who?" Ollie shook his head from side to side. He seemed to tense up for a moment after that. She wanted to ask "what's wrong?" but in these situations, she knew that it was best to just watch and wait. Finally, he broke his silence and said, "They're on the move. Wait here."

"Should I contact the others?"

"Not yet," he said as he got up and casually walked away, briefly patting her on the shoulder as he walked past. "At least not until we know who we're up against."

And so Felicity waited. In the meantime, she took tiny nibbles at her chapatti in between throwing obsessive glances at her smartphone. "Five minutes," she muttered. She watched the people coming in and out of the place but it only served to lower her hopes even further. She only perked up when her ears picked up what sounded like a series of mechanical whooshing sounds. She glanced around and concluded that the sounds came from the alley. Taking a deep breath, she left enough money on the table to cover their meals and then made her way towards the alleyway where mystery awaited her.

She nearly bumped into a young lady wearing a most outlandish-looking dress coming out from the alley in a rush. "Oh pardon me," the lady said.

"Well, someone's dressed up for the occasion."

"Quite right," the lady answered. "What occasion is it?"

"Oh, you know… the occasion…" Felicity looked over the lady's shoulder but all she could see was the dilapidated brick wall of the building in the alley. The lady was very obviously trying to pretend that all was right and that there was nothing in the alley behind her. Felicity chose to go along with it. "The uh… occasion where… you're all dressed up for?"

"Yes, I was rather fond of that occasion," the lady said with a smile. She threw several glances around here and said, "But now is not the occasion for tarrying and lingering." Without warning, she grabbed Felicity's hand and began walking briskly down the street, past the Indian food plaza and going further downtown.

Felicity was too surprised to protest and she meekly blundered in tow. "Um, where are we going?"

"Oh, just a brisk walk. For the occasion." She increased her pace as they continued walking down the street.

It didn't take a fool to put two and two together. In fact, Felicity's experiences with Team Arrow only helped cement her conclusions: they were being followed. She couldn't tell how many there were, or how far behind, but she was quite certain that there were pursuers and that they were the quarry. "I hate to state the obvious, but this seems like the kind of occasion where we get followed."

"Very good," the lady said, like a teacher congratulating a student. "I'm quite sure that the Doctor would love to meet you."

"Doctor—"

Before Felicity could continue, they rounded a sharp corner that took her by surprise. The lady led her down another block before taking a second corner, this time into a dark side street. They found a small alcove that was built into the building, no doubt a section made for garbage collection, and ducked inside for cover.

"Who—"

"Shhh," the lady shushed.

The both of them sat in silence when they heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Felicity counted at least three men from the sounds of their muffled voices. She stiffened and held her breath when she realised that the voices were getting louder and clearer. The men were getting closer. Besides their voices, there was the faint sound of electrical crackling, punctuated by the occasional beep or two.

"She's close," one man said. "There's residual artron energy coming from…"

The footsteps increased both in pace and loudness. They were almost upon them. Felicity tried to take in her surroundings, searching for a way out, but in her mind she knew that they were trapped and that the only option was to remain hidden. She sank deeper into the shadows but to no avail when five men suddenly sprang up before them. One was holding some kind of handheld meter and waving it in her general direction.

"Found her," one said.

The lady stepped out in front of Felicity to address her pursuers. "Now, now boys, I'm sure that we can all come to a more amicable resolution if we all gathered around a table for Indian and drinks all around."

However, none of the men seemed interested in parley. One man held up what might have been a taser or flashlight. It didn't matter, for the last thing she remembered was a bright flash of light.

* * *

When Felicity came to some indeterminate time later, she found herself lying down on a flat and cold metal slab. She felt several electrodes attached to various regions of her forehead and temple, their wires running over her face and hands. She turned to one side to find Clara stirring from a similar bunk. The wires attached to her carelessly dangled onto a plain concrete floor, sprawled and entangled, and connected to an ominous-looking server rack several feet away.

A few men in long, white lab coats were hunched over a single desktop computer, quietly whispering amongst each other while several other armed men in military camo stood guard, watching in silence. One of the lab coats turned their heads and took note of Felicity. With a hushed word, his colleagues all peeled away from the screen and looked in her direction.

"You're awake. This is unexpected," the older one among them said.

"What, you expected us to remain unconscious the whole time?" Felicity asked.

Clara began plucking the electrical sensors off her face. "You people are from UNIT," she muttered.

"What's UNIT?"

"It matters not," the lab coat said. "We have what we want, thanks to you, Clara. Now, we have the means to fabricate a TARDIS key from your subconscious imprint of the device and the residual artron energy from your constant exposure to the time machine and soon, the Doctor's TARDIS too shall fall into our hands."

"I'm Felicity." Felicity gestured to her right. "She's Clara."

"I'm insulted," Clara said as she sat herself up, legs dangling off the edge of her metal bunk. "You kidnap us without even knowing who's who."

"Well, whatever. We weren't expecting two companions. Regardless, you both fell right into our trap and opened up your subconscious to the mind trap." The lab coat motioned for a pair of soldiers to step forward. "We don't need you two anymore. Kill them both."

The soldiers raised their assault rifles and took aim, but Felicity was unfazed by the threat. She held up her hands non-threateningly at the men. "If, by mind trap, you're talking about that elaborate but alien virtual reality simulation system that you projected into our minds while we were unconscious, then you're in for a big surprise." She maintained a smug and most certainly defiant smile.

"Sir, we have a problem," one of the younger lab coats announced, as if on cue.

The leader motioned for the soldiers to stand down and then turned towards the young man. "What is it?"

"I'm not sure…"

Ignoring the threatening looks of the two soldiers who still had their weapons trained at her, Felicity got to her feet and started pulling electrodes off her face. "I'll tell you what it is. It's a virus that I carefully crafted to infect your terminal and erase every piece of data that you have collected from us."

"That's impossible!" the lab coat said. "This interrogation system hails from the golden era of the Time Lords. You can't hack into alien technology just like that!" He snapped his fingers as if it meant something to either of them.

Clara couldn't help herself but laugh. "That's what you get for locking up the Doctor's companion and the world's greatest hacker in the same room together."

"Wait, 'world's greatest'?" Felicity asked.

"Yeah. Best hacker in whatever city and city doesn't seem to suit you."

"Well, I'm flattered," Felicity answered.

"Don't be. You've earned that title as far as I'm concerned."

"Enough!" The lab coat was clearly furious at the pair and it was most certainly not just because they were both ignoring him. He pointed a menacing finger at Felicity. "You will fix this now, or else-"

"Or else what?" Felicity interrupted. "You'll sic the men with guns on us? I'll have you know that my specially crafted virus was not only designed to mess with your database, but to also send out a certain signal of certain significance which I am certain would be picked up by a certain associate of mine who will most certainly be gunning for you guys as we speak."

"That's a lot of certainties," Clara said.

"I don't believe you." The man hunched over the computer console and exchanged a few more whispered words with his subordinates. He then gave his attention to the soldiers and, with but a silent nod, they began advancing on both girls with weapons trained at them. "If you continue to remain uncooperative, we will just have to eliminate the both of you. We have other means and resources to obtain the TARDIS that does not involve you, after all."

The soldiers took aim. Their fingers reached for the trigger. And then the lights went out – in a very literal sense.

There was a nearly inaudible swish, followed by the clatter of an assault rifle hitting the cold, hard concrete floor. Another woosh. More weapons were dropped. Tough and hardened men of war grunted in pain, and then fell flat on their faces. There was panic in the air. Although Felicity could not see it, but she could sense the fear and the confusion amongst her captors. More soldiers screamed and grunted. Some attempted to fire blindly in the dark. The brief but loud muzzle flares temporarily hinted at the immense chaos that befell the men, but these moments were far and few in between. More often than not, the soldiers did not even get an opportunity to open fire. A lone shadow moved quickly amongst their numbers. Soldiers fell wherever this shadow went.

By the time the lights were restored, anyone armed with a weapon was sprawled on the ground, unconscious. The men in white lab coats were all tied up and sitting on the ground. An elderly man in blue Crombie coat stood over the computers and waved what looked like a blue light pen around while another most familiar green, hooded individual armed with a bow stooped over the soldiers to make sure that they were really down.

"What took you so long?" Felicity asked.

"Well, you know, the usual," the Green Arrow replied.

"Who's grandpa?"

"That's The Doctor," both Clara and the Green Arrow answered.

"A rogue UNIT splinter group with forbidden Gallifreyan technology attempting to steal the TARDIS," the Doctor muttered to himself as he continued waving his sonic contraption over the rack of servers. The array of machines blinked and beeped, as if responding to the slightly high-pitched whirring sound of his device. "I'll need to have a word with Kate about this."

"Send her my regards," Green Arrow casually said as he walked up to Felicity to help her get the remaining bits of wires and probes off her. "How are you? Did they hurt you?"

"Not as much as I hurt them," Felicity answered with a smug tone. "Besides, how is it that you two know each other?"

"It's a long story that never happened on an island."

"That 'never happened'?"

"Yeah. Timey wimey time travel thing." Green Arrow – or rather, Oliver Queen – put both hands on her shoulders and stared deeply into her eyes. "What's important is that you're safe."

He was right, of course. For Felicity Smoak, that was the most important thing in the world indeed.

 **END**.


End file.
